


With The Voice Of God

by Melanthios



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Missing Scenes, Missing character AU, bc fuck canon and fuck fanon as well, i named the beast 'Camille'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 18:38:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10542234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melanthios/pseuds/Melanthios
Summary: Bringing back my fav evil queen.





	1. Chapter 1

Sometimes, when they were walking the grounds or eating dinner, Belle heard music. It was beautiful and sad, and lit upon the air silvery and carrying. She’d never heard anything like it, but once, Père Robert had described the sound of a pipe organ to her—‘like the voices of angels’—and she imagined that must be what she was hearing. She noticed, when she glanced over at her host, that he never seemed to enjoy the music. When he thought she wasn’t looking, she often caught him looking apprehensive, glancing toward the same part of the castle.  
  
One night, after her first sleep, she was wandering as close as she dared to the West Wing, when she heard her host’s voice, and the voice of another, answering. The great halls echoed sound wonderfully, and though they spoke soft, some little crack must have been letting out just enough for her to hear.  
  
‘—that’s how it’s going to _be_ —’  
  
‘Just try and stop me.’  
  
‘Why can’t you just be happy for me like everyone else!’  
  
‘It won’t last,’ sneered the unfamiliar voice. ‘She’s _nobody_ —’  
  
‘Don’t you _dare_ talk about her that way!’ There was the sound of a roar in his voice, and Belle frowned; who _was_ this person? They hadn’t even _met_ , why did he hate her so much?  
  
‘I swear, Forte, sometimes I think you don’t _want_ the Curse to break….’  
  
Silence. Very telling silence, and then the beast’s voice again, equal parts shock and growing betrayal.  
  
‘…Mon Dieu, you _don_ _’t_ , do you?’  
  
No reply. Belle realised the entire time they’d been speaking, someone had been playing the pipe organ—and the utter silence was because she hadn’t noticed until it had stopped. She thought of Maestro Cadenza, and wondered, a little terrified at the prospect, if the player _was_ the instrument. Père Robert and her father had described the hugeness of a pipe organ—big enough to dwarf even the church, the biggest building Belle had ever seen in person.  
  
‘You _like_ me suffering, is that it? Does it amuse you? Merde, and they called me—’  
  
The sudden chord was like the wrath of God Himself, and Belle felt her bones tremble with it, jumping and curling against a flourish of marble balustrade, terror curdling her blood. When the noise finally stopped, her ears were ringing, and her heart was hammering in her chest. When she heard the voice again, it sounded cold and cruelly satisfied.  
  
‘Oh, _Camille.’_ A wicked breath of a laugh. ‘Why _ever_ would I give up such power as this?’  
  
‘And you’d drag us all down with you!?’  
  
‘C’est la vie, Cherie!’ he laughed with more artifice than feeling. ‘C’est la vie.’


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Belle heard the music, playing just the same as before—neither louder nor softer, but there was a different tone to it; perhaps because she knew. She spent most of her time with—Camille? Was _that_ his name? What a beautiful name—and when he asked about her distraction, seeming worried, she thought about putting it down to not having slept well after the terrible… sound… from the night before. But she thought on it, on the talk of the Curse, on the way the servants tried to keep each other from mentioning something, and wondered.  
  
But how could she ask him? He had become gentler, true; but she didn’t want to risk asking him about something so painful as betrayal.  
  
As it turned out, she had an opportunity when they drifted into the library that afternoon, and ended up reading in separate parts of it, out of sight of one another. Belle quietly slipped away, and took off her shoes, sneaking into the West Wing on bare feet. It was bitterly cold, but she didn’t mind. This time, she knew not to touch the bell jar, or go near it. If he found her in here, she would be far away from it, and claim she was trying to find the source of the music.  
  
Well, she was—but not as naively as to listen to it better.  
  
Nobody could want to be an object, trapped in a castle—trapped in a single room—day in, day out, in eternal winter, forever? That didn’t make any sense at all, and Belle knew from her much expanded mental library of books, that usually, in stories, people who did bad things to other people were afraid of something, like a cornered animal.  
  
Considering the temper she’d seen, Belle wondered if Camille had frightened the pipe organ before. Musical instruments were delicate, and she could only imagine…  
  
She’d been thinking as she went up the stairs, and finally found herself in the room again, and saw the instrument for the first time.  
  
It was vast, so much bigger than she imagined, ranks and ranks of pipes shining in the winter sunlight coming through the windows. Like the rest of the castle, it looked strange, like it had grown from the carved acanthus and carved flourishes, though there was no such thing as life that looked like carvings, or was made of metal. Like Maestro Cadenza, there were tiers of long levers Belle knew were called ‘keys’; but the pipe organ had so much more—there were little knobs, almost a hundred of them, and below, where feet would have to play them, more and larger keys.  
  
You would need to be a clockmaker to play this, and have very strong and agile… well, everything, Belle decided. There was no sound from the pipe organ, and Belle decided she would extend the hand of friendship first, dropping a court’sy and trying to find where the face of the object was.  
  
‘Eavesdropping is rude,’ spoke the organ, after taking a breath that sounded complex and was laden with Potential. He sounded so human, because of those breaths. Belle supposed anything with pipes must need air for them. So… pipe organs had lungs. What a marvellously unsettling thought.  
  
‘So is sabotaging a whole lot of people’s happiness for your own selfish ends,’ Belle said, deciding if they were playing with live steel, then she’d come out swinging.  
  
‘Touché.’ He actually sounded _admiring_. In the shadows, very far up, she could see the almost-face in the decorative ironwork; but the reason she could see it was because it was glowing, faintly, with unnatural light. ‘But, mademoiselle, I fail to see what accusing me will do. Do you think telling _him_ will stop me?’  
  
‘You can’t tear us apart, so your plan is ruined.’  
  
‘Oh, ma chere,’ the pipe organ’s voice was liquid and thick enough to drown in. Belle heard the slight lilt of the other two musicians in it. ‘I think you fail to grasp…’  
  
He began to play.  
  
‘I don’t have to tear the two of you apart…’  
  
Belle backed away on instinct, as the music got louder.  
  
‘I can just _kill you_.’  
  
Belle felt some horrible thrumming—like the feeling from before, but somehow different. _Wrong_. She couldn’t move, the sound worse than ropes, immobilising vibration buzzing in her very teeth, in her sinews.  
  
Belle collapsed on the floor, and heard nothing but the music; still, she finally was able to speak.  
  
‘Why—?’  
  
The music stopped, and Belle gasped like she’d been drowning, laying prone on the cold marble of the floor.  
  
_‘Why?’_ hissed the composer. **_‘Why?_** Do you have any idea what it’s _like,_ trapped in here with nothing to do and nobody to talk to?’ His fury, raw and vulnerable, was quickly covered up by scorn. ‘As soon as _you_ came, he did just what he _always_ does—runs after the new pretty, _abandons_ the rest of us—’  
  
‘Belle!’ came the beast—Camille’s voice, and Belle heard his footfalls. ‘Forte, what have you—’  
  
‘I’m fine,’ Belle said, ‘I just—fainted,’ she said, glancing at the pipe organ. ‘The music,’ she said, ‘it was so beautiful, and…’ she laughed a little, ‘silly of me. I’ve never heard anything like it! It’s so beautiful, I can’t imagine being able to hear it all the time—all your life?’ She didn’t have to pretend the breathless wonder now, the idea _was_ stunning. The music _was_ beautiful.  
  
Maybe she could mend this broken friendship—because that _was_ what this had to be. A musician, that wasn’t a servant. Artists weren’t servants, Papa had always told her that quite firmly. Artists were truly outside all ideas of rank and class. Belle could recognise the frustrated rage of an artist treated like a servant—her father had many stories about it, after all.  
  
The music turned sweet again, Forte playing the chimes. Why was she protecting him? He’d just tried to kill her….

**Author's Note:**

> 'first sleep' - people used to sleep in two four-ish hour sessions, and get up around midnight or so for a couple hours, before 'second sleep' in the morning. This died out with the rise of capitalism (and the invention of 'wasted' time) + electricity.


End file.
